Czech and Slovak Resistance to Communism: An Individual Matter

Poster calling for the dissolution of People's Militias, Prague 1989

In the last of our series of posts from Utah State University, Recording Voices & Documenting Memories presents the work of history student Kate Rouse DuHadway who, in this essay, reflects upon Czech and Slovak resistance to communism:

When we in the United States think of political or military resistance, especially resistance to communism, we might think of stone-faced fighters, governments-in-exile, or clandestine opposition groups. Not all resistance to communism was so brazen, however, nor typical of what we in the United States might normally associate with resistance. By analyzing a few of the oral histories collected by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, I will show how many acts and attitudes such as religious and individual expression, which we in the West today may consider passive or harmless, became a means of resistance for ordinary Czechs and Slovaks during the years of what Vaclav Havel refers to as “post-totalitarianism” in the former Czechoslovakia.

Susan Mikula with her mother, sister and father Jozef

Even before Victorious February and Czechoslovakia's official transformation into a communist state, Susan Mikula said her father, an exiled member of the Tiso government, began working with the OSS (the forerunner of the American CIA), to oppose communism and undermine the new regime in whatever way he could. Headed by Catholic priest and right-wing politician Jozef Tiso, the short-lived government of Slovakia proclaimed its independence from the Czech half of the republic in March 1939, under pressure from Hitler.  After the Nazi defeat, Tiso was tried and executed in Czechoslovakia in 1947,  while many members of his former government fled to Austria, including Jozef Mikula.  As the communists rapidly gained political traction in post-war Czechoslovakia, Mikula founded the Biela Legia around that time with Jozef Vicen. The Biela Legia, or white league, was an underground Czech and Slovak resistance organization based in Austria, which gathered intelligence for the West and arranged for the escape of political prisoners,  and through which Susan Mikula, her mother and sister also escaped through Austria to the United States.  Jozef Mikula's was a bold and brazen form of political resistance, for which his wife and daughters suffered dearly under the regime, and would have suffered more had they not escaped.

 Helena Fabry at Ludwigsburg refugee camp

Helena Fabry, a journalist in Prague during the early years of communism in Czechoslovakia, exercised a more subtle form of resistance as the ethics of the new regime conflicted with the ethical considerations of her job. Before the end of WWII, while the Nazis still occupied Czechoslovakia, Edvard Benes' government-in-exile had predetermined the exile of ethnic Germans and Hungarians (all except the ones who had openly resisted the occupation) from the country. In order to punish “Nazi criminals, traitors, and their abettors,” Benes issued a decree in June 1945 establishing “Extraordinary People's Courts,” comprised of a professional jurist and four lay associates. Because they were nominated by the national committees, which were highly influenced by the Czech Communist Party, the People's Courts became a means by which the communists conveniently disposed of political opponents, and protected party members who had been true conspirators and collaborators with the Nazis.  

Fabry described her direct experience with the so-called People's Courts in her interview with the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library.   After a year living in Prague and writing for the Czech newspaper Svoboda Slova, Fabry was sent to the small town of Louny to supply content for the localized last page of the Slova. As part of her job, she attended many of the People's Court trials, where she said local farmers were being handed harsh sentences for so-called “crimes against the republic,” which could constitute anything from “having one more goose than they were supposed to have,” in Fabry's words, or because “they didn't return the proper amount of grain which they were supposed to give to the state, to the supply office.”

“It didn't need to be true,” Fabry said in her interview. “It was strictly political abuse, ... making the people afraid. And the judgments were swift and fast, and sentences were harsh and immediate. Even prison terms, the forfeiting of, confiscating of the property, or at least harsh fines. I could not believe that something like that, such abuse of power, was possible, and abuse of people. So I wrote article after article about it, and that, of course, didn't please the communists really at all.”

Because of her articles, Fabry said she was told by the city of Louny to leave town and never come back. Upon her return to Prague, she received a notice after a few days that she was officially expelled from the association of journalists, and her professional license was revoked. When she had first come to Louny on assignment from her editor-in-chief in Prague, Fabry did not say that she set out to actively resist communism, but as her experience with the communist-controlled People’s Courts increasingly soured her view of the party and its actions, she became one of the first to resist in the way that Vaclav Havel described in his 1978 essay: she sought to “live within the truth. ” As the local communist leaders sought, in Fabry's view, to create a facade of intimidation, to create the “crust of lies” that Havel described within their own town, Fabry's actions became a real threat. She was attempting to break through the facade, to tip the row of carefully placed dominoes that posed as an iron wall of repression. Later, she resisted by learning code and passing along secret messages for an underground group, but she began her dissent as a natural reaction to something she perceived as inherently unjust. Unarmed and initially apolitical, she resisted by choosing the value of truth above the value of “building socialism.”

 George Mesko's wedding photo, 1960

George Mesko, a medical doctor raised in the Catholic church, resisted the establishment in communist Czechoslovakia simply by choosing to get married in the Catholic church, and by having his children baptized in secret. According to him, “in secret” meant traveling to Budapest in the case of his wedding, or to a small town in the countryside in the case of his children's baptisms, finding the church and knocking the priest's door, then having the priest perform the ceremony with the priest's  housekeeper acting as godmother. As a student living in a Catholic boys' dormitory in 1950, Mesko witnessed first-hand the infamous raids on nunneries and monasteries, where thousands of nuns, monks and priests were imprisoned or sent to labor and internment camps.  In his own dormitory, Mesko said two priests, a brother and the nuns were removed over a period of two to three years, and he described the dorms as gradually being “infiltrated” by “Martians,” his term for both communists and girls. He said some of the clergy chose to assimilate to the communist party and its views in the interest of self-preservation, in the same vein as Havel's green grocer, who decides to display a “Workers of the World, Unite!” slogan in his window to protect himself within the system.  But Mesko had very little respect for those clergymen, and he claimed that students did not listen to them because of their communist sympathies. Like Jozef Mikula and Helena Fabry, Mesko was a communist resistor. Instead of working for the CIA or passing along secret messages, however, Mesko's resistance was comprised of the simple and seemingly unassuming acts of having a church wedding and having his children baptized. By displaying his individuality and belief in something outside of a system that allowed for neither individuality nor allegiance to groups or organizations outside of itself, Mesko was as much a resistor and a perceived threat to the system as Helena Fabry.

Although it placed him outside of the established system, which at that time provided sustantial benefits for those who would simply play the game, Mesko pursued his religion because it was an integral part of his individual identity. To give that up would be to give up an important part of himself. “It's difficult to say, but when you're growing up with this heritage and you see the morality which originally comes with that, you know, it's part of your ego that you are trying to be a decent human being,” Mesko said of his Catholic background. “I'm not saying that who(ever) is not a church-goer is not a moral person, … but I felt that it's kind of very important that we stay with our tradition.”

From the oral histories cited in this paper, one can see that individual Czechs and Slovaks had many reasons, and many methods of resistance to the “post-totalitarian” regime. In a political ideology that denied individuality, the very expression of that individuality became, in Havel's eyes, one of the primary means of resistance.  From the interviews of Susan Mikula, Helena Fabry, and George Mesko, one can see that for each of them, the means of resistance were highly individual. For Jozef Mikula, it was political and public. For Helena Fabry, it was ideological and subversive, and for George Mesko, it was personal and private. Each individual, especially Fabry and Mesko, seemed to start down the path of resistance with a value (such as truth or tradition) that they deemed to be more important than the ideology of communism, and which, to them, superseded the social pull to conform. If placed in a political environment that would have tolerated extra-political values and loyalties, their actions do not seem revolutionary or clandestine. In a system that aimed to “subordinate society to the state, ” however, even simple acts of free expression and individuality became genuine threats to the regime. Just as Havel's green grocer, who, by refusing to display the party slogan in his window, refused to play into the facade, and by so doing, undermined the very core of the regime's legitimacy.

- The National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library would like to thank Utah State University, and specifically Dr. Shawn Clybor, for making this project possible.

Resistance Against Communism in Czechoslovakia

Photo of the Masin brothers, California, 1980s

In the first of a series of posts, Recording Voices & Documenting Memories is showcasing the work of history students at Utah State University who used NCSML oral histories to write research papers for their Eastern Europe Since 1500 class. Topics covered ranged from gender studies to dissent and activism in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War era.

For her paper, Tess Murray chose the theme of Resistance Against Communism in Czechoslovakia:

In this essay I will argue that all acts of resistance against the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia were effective to a degree. I will first discuss how the communists were able to seize power in Czechoslovakia. I will then examine what I believe to be the definition of resistance. I will then explore the effectiveness of the extraordinary acts of resistance performed by ordinary men such as Josef Masin, Radek Masin, and Karel Ruml.

When thinking of a seizure of power, people tend to think of it in terms of either a violent revolution or a foreign government imposing itself on the locals. In places such as Poland, the Red Army was in fact needed to enforce communism. This was not the case in Czechoslovakia. The Communist Party in Czechoslovakia came to power through their own efforts. The Communist party was one of the most organized political parties at the time and it had plenty of training and resources at its disposal. They were able to undermine any non-communist party. They did this by rewarding communist sympathizers within the other parties. Communism was also extremely popular because it was seen as a system that was the antithesis of the Nazi establishment. Communism became even more popular as it promoted the displacement of anyone seen as a Nazi collaborator. By 1947 communists had gained thirty-eight percent of the vote in Czechoslovakia. The vote reached roughly fifty percent when including the vote of social democrats. Many of the people in Czechoslovakia believed in the ideology of communism so deeply that they were willing to overlook its failures and inconsistencies. This is shown by a statement made by the Czechoslovakian communist supporter Rudolf Margolius. He said, “I cannot give up my conviction that my ideal is essentially sound and good, just as I cannot explain why it has failed---as it apparently has.” Communism did not come to power in Czechoslovakia by force, it was chosen by the people.

With every system there is going to be some form of resistance regardless of how popular it is. But what exactly defines effective resistance? I believe the words of Vaclav Havel describe resistance very well, “...individuals who were willing to live within the truth, even when things were at their worst.” This is the core of every form of resistance. Men and women are resisting when they are willing to realize the lie they are living in and call it what it really is. The mere act of being aware of the facade makes it crumble. By taking any action against a defective system it can be exposed as a fake. This leads to the system being further examined which in turn causes it to become more vulnerable to further resistance. In the case of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, any action that caused people to question the validity of the regime was effective resistance. While a single act on its own may have not brought about the downfall of communism, it was by little actions that the seeds of further resistance were sown. Essentially, effective resistance is anything that reveals a broken system for what it really is.


Josef Masin, Germany, 1964

A man who effectively resisted communism in Czechoslovakia was Josef Masin. He became a part of an underground resistance group at a young age. When stating why he did it he said, “We fought, we wanted to fight for something, for Czechoslovakia.” Josef helped obtain weapons that would assist them in leaving the country. He also helped his group steal 850,000 crowns. They disguised themselves in militia uniforms and car jacked a van that was carrying money from a factory that made tractor parts. They used this money to fund further acts of resistance. He successfully escaped from Czechoslovakia with four other men to Berlin, causing an extensive man hunt to occur. No matter how many times he was imprisoned or tortured he would still continue to look for little ways in which he could resist a regime that he did not agree with. While his actions within the group did not bring down communism itself it exposed the cracks in its foundation.


Radek Masin, circa 1960

Radek Masin also resisted against communism in Czechoslovakia. He was continually planning ways to sabotage the communist regime. He tried to get in the army to attack it from within. When that did not work he planned to make it to the west and receive training there. While in the midst of a plan to leave the country he was caught. This led to his arrest and eventual conviction in a farcical trial. He was imprisoned for over two years and forced to work in a uranium mine. Even while working in the camp as a prisoner he was plotting ways to steal explosives to use in resistance activities. He tried to get information by borrowing books on explosives from the prison library. He also participated in other acts of resistance such as burning large amounts of straw. He felt this was a triumph not only because they destroyed so much, but because of the psychological impact it had. While this was never reported by the press, this little act caused quite a stir as it got passed through the grapevine. The effect of this action was that it caused people to start talking. And when people start talking they start to question. He knew that it was the little stuff that worked. He himself said, “We did not have any grandiose plans, you know, like ‘Oh we are going to overthrow the regime.’ That was quite obvious that you cannot do it. You just have to do whatever you can do. Even if it is small stuff.” These little actions were effective because they put the people collaborating with the regime on edge. It was also effective because it started conversations that needed to be had about what was really happening within the Communist regime.


Karel Ruml, 1949

Another man that helped resist communism was Karel Ruml. He had come to a disturbing conclusion about communism. After seeing prisoners in a work camp he said, “It sort of dawned on me then, that in a communist society people who were not healthy and capable of physical labor for the state were not expected to live very long.” A small way in which Karel resisted was by delivering mail that contained microfilm to certain locations. He also sent and received coded messages via the phone or postcards. Karel also resisted by participating in an act later named by the western press as “the freedom train”. During this act his job was to protect the hand brake on a train. He was to fend off any person who tried to stop the train. They were able to hurtle this train and its passengers safely into Germany. There were students on the train that made the choice to not go back to Czechoslovakia. His act of resistance enabled them to have this choice. This act of resistance was effective because it was highly publicized. It gave people back in Czechoslovakia an example to follow. It may have made people who were blinded by the ideology of communism stop a moment and ponder what communism was leading people to do.

Effective resistance makes people examine the world around them. Every act that was performed by these men promoted people living in a lie to do just that. By making people begin to probe the limits of their world, it can be argued that those small acts of resistance were successful. All that is necessary for change to begin to happen is an honest conversation. When actions or words lead to this type of conversation they most certainly should be deemed effective. No these acts of resistance in and of themselves did not bring about the fall of communism. But they were most certainly a catalyst. This ultimately means that any single act or any single person can create an environment in which great and often seemingly impossible things can occur. Small measures may seem insignificant to some but just look at the impact these men had. The point being, if a person wants change, the first thing they must do is be candid with themselves about the world around them. This will allow them to begin living in truth. Change will surely follow.